,^ARlti\/3^A:TKJ^p| 



HI/' LETTER/: WITH ■ NOTE/- 
'VPON PAINTING' 





noccccvni' 




Class 

Book 

Copyright ]^^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSHV 



RTHVR-ATKlRy? 

EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS 

WITH NOTES ON PAINTING AND 

LANDSCAPE : WRITTEN DURING 

THE PERIOD OF HIS WORK AS A PAINTER IN 

THE LAST TWO YEARS OF HIS LIFE .... 

1896 : 1898 




A. M. ROBERTSON : SAN FRANCISCO : CALIFORNIA 
M DCCCC VIII 



LiBHARY cf GONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

DEC 28 1908 

,p^ C-opyrignt Entry _ 
GLASS »* XX& No. 
COPY a. J 






Copyright by BrUCE PoRTER 

December 1908 



Printed by 
San Francisco 



THE LETTERS OF ARTHUR ATKINS 



ARTHUR ATKINS 
1873-1899 

For the friends of Arthur Atkins, these 
extracts from his letters, from the notes writ- 
ten upon the margins of his sketches, will have 
a real and touching value. They will recall 
for them, his talk, his interests, the lovely 
charm of the serious and noble friend they 
knew. For those to whom he was unknown, 
the pages may reveal something of the sensi- 
tive mind and heart of the artist : his response 
to the beauty and dignity of the visible world. 

The publication rests upon the desire of his 
associates, to supplement the pictures with 
whatever remains as a record of his gifts: — 
obscured as these gifts were, by the circum- 
stances of life, by the last sad circumstance 
of death in early manhood. 

It is with the belief that his place in art, 
his influence upon painting in California, 
will, in the future, be perceived as distinctive 
and important, that these written words are 
preserved; in deep affection for him, and in 
trust for that future. 



THE LETTERS 

If I have avoided mentioning the hardships Piedmont, 
and discouragements of my work, yet the Oct., i8g6. 
hardships are very real; but why detail all 
I have to do without? Surely the incubus 
of discouragement — the accumulation of the 
expressions of despair and defeat, both writ- 
ten and spoken, — is heavy enough upon 
humanity, without my adding to it. 

I have made my choice: from this on the 
only pleasure I count upon is the pleasure in 
work, in books, in the open country: and if 
I have good food, and good clothes upon my 
back, I will thank God and feel happy. 

The hope that sustains me is that my work 
may some day rank as the work of an honest 
man, who painted as he saw and felt. Don't 
think it is all plain sailing; if I did not keep 
the whip-hand on myself, this problem of the 
future would ruin the possibilities of the 
present; and if I do not speak of discourage- 
ment, do not think it is because it is easy. I 
remember always, that littleness of life means 
Httleness of an additional sort in the work: 
that if one cares for one's work, one cannot 
be careless about one's life — that the artist 
who would be sincere in his work, must learn 
above all else, to be honest with himself. 



On the Red plush — lots of cinders — the prairie out- 
Trazw, gj^jg. a jnan, burdened by the thought that it 
1897'. ^^ Sunday, dismally whistles "Beulah Land." 
This prairie country is peculiarly Sunday-like 
— absolutely without interest or incident. 
Five hundred miles from St. Louis, Spring 
begins to show, and while it has a beauty of 
its own, the character of the landscape is 
monotonous and the colour very acid, the 
greens sharp where they show: but the bare 
trees are of a very delicate purple, accented 
here and there by almond blossoms of a gentle 
pink. The country now, for the first time 
since leaving the San Joaquin Valley, begins 
to be interesting — lived in. 



New York, This city is a most wonderful and beautiful 

Apr., 1897. place, with noble masses of building, green 

squares, hazes of purple-grey trees, now 

flushed with a delicate golden-green — the 

breaking of Spring. 

I have seen the exhibitions; many of these 
men can paint: many can draw, too: few 
have anything of importance to say: so these 
exhibitions are filled with affectations, some- 
times well painted, oftener not — with the 
fantastic and the commonplace. These men 
love nothing, and their tools only in a half- 
hearted way. Here and there, Hke a jewel, 
one finds a beautiful thing — a panel by 
Whistler and a canvas by Muhrman. . . . 
The Bach fugue is still with me: any one 
using a feather duster briskly, sets it careering 
through my head. 



I am able to manage the memory of things Dynas 
I have seen well enough, but when I try to ^^^"^^ 
hear you, the Bach fugue comes back to me Mar.^1897. 
in spasmodic fragments: then the swirl of 
that other big thing, or the Widor (which I 
heard twice and refused to hear a third 
time) ; it is a very faint memory now, but 
faint as it is, it comes with great dignity and 
beauty . . . 

It is Arthur Atkins who writes: not what 
he might be; I'm trying hard to accept him 
and make the best of it, but it takes time. It 
is the vile artificial conscience he is cursed 
with, that gives all the trouble: but there is 
always the comfort that we have only fifty 
years, at the most, before we get a new start, 
and it really ought to be great fun. I'm hop- 
ing that they will set me to work on the form- 
ing planets — making the new landscapes and 
arranging better colour schemes for the sun- 
sets. You will have placed at your command 
the thunders and the high winds of heaven, 
to compose as you will; — what fun it will be 
to go! But like the "Jolly, jolly Mariners," 
I say "take back your golden fiddles, and give 
me paints and oils" — ^but golden fiddles, with 
splendidly dressed players in the full evening 
light — we won't quarrel with that sort of 
thing ! 

Last Sunday morning I went to Bristol 
Cathedral. There was no postlude, and I 
heard the organ only during the service and 
at some distance. These great cathedrals 
have a way of giving every sound a very 
positive value (just as certain lights give 
every object a distinct note of colour) so 
3 



that if the playing were more or less me- 
chanical, I should, probably, be none the 
wiser. 

There is much that is very beautiful about 
these lawn-like meadows, covered with prim- 
roses and spotted with great elms: the sky is 
often beautiful, too, in a delicate way, but 
the line is not the line of the Piedmont 
country, and the colour as a whole is thin and 
sharp. 

One nice thing about this place is the long 
quiet evenings, and when they are clear, there 
comes over everything the most wonderful 
subdued light, which embraces and trans- 
figures the whole world: and this light fades 
quietly — about ten o'clock it has gone. 



Penarth, England is much more beautiful now, than 
June, 1897. when I landed: the green less acid and the 
long evenings with their golden light, drive 
me utterly daft. The fields with the grass 
just being cut, and the wonderful wonderful 
scents of the pink clover, of the woodbine 
from the hedges, make me want to shriek 
aloud — for I cannot paint scents. . . . 

All this seeing has encouraged me greatly: 
I know I see and feel things beautifully 
enough: what I lack is the power to state it 
all in a direct way. It will come in time. 
. . . Heaven only knows what I am! ''a 
blooming cosmopolouse" I suppose: I don't 
care — I like this roving round the world — it 
suits me well. I have just finished a fairly 
large landscape, looking down from the cliffs 
high above, with just the thin white fine of 

4 



breakers — quiet and low In colour, with some 
of the solemnity of the sea. But after all, it 
is Piedmont I want to paint: every now and 
then the desire to see it, "sweeps gustily thro' 
my soul," but the whole world is beautiful, 
and as some one has said, *'It is by the grace 
of God that we are artists." I leave for 
Paris in a week: if Paris is more beautiful 
than this, I shall go off with an intense flash 
and an explosion, for my enthusiasm has 
reached the top notch! 



Your letter from Inverness, fragrant with Pans, 
the odor of sun-burnt hills, of the sea and •^"^3'. ^^^^ 
wind-blown woods, was hailed with joy on its 
arrival here, last night. 

W. and I had just returned from dinner, 
and as the sun went down with pomp and 
purple behind the Louvre, we sat upon the 
wall over the river, seeing the swirl of the 
sea from the hills above Tomales Bay. It 
was a fine letter: for me, full of sights of big 
landscape and the sea: what shall I tell you, 
in return? This morning we were at St. 
Sulpice. On going in from the hard white 
glare of the street, one is struck and quieted 
by a pervading opulence: the air is soft 
and slightly perfumed by the incense. Col- 
oured by it and by the glass, the atmos- 
phere becomes golden, and gold is everywhere 
— in the air, in the colour of the small organ, 
and in the altar and the vestments of the 
priests ; the lighted candles strike a lower note 
of the same colour; and, afar off, one hears 
the chanting of the choir: beautiful voices 
5 



of children and men, like jewels — turquoise 
and opals of blue, set nobly in gold. Oh! 
but it is splendid — one sits almost dreaming 
and thanking God for the gift of ears and 
eyes. In the midst of the wealth of sound 
and colour and complete happiness, the great 
organ crashes out, with a force as irresistible 
as the sea at Point Bonita! And here words 
cease to be of use; it is great, too great to 
say much about : one just listens and wonders. 
But for you, it might have been years before 
I heard Widor: the joy I have in great music, 
makes me very grateful to you. 



Aug., 189;. My second volume of "The Lark" reached 
me a few days ago. How utterly Californian 
it is and heavens ! — how Californian am I ! 

It is the beginning of great things to be 
done in California; from such a land, gener- 
ous and open-handed, a great art should 
spring. . . . 

Did I tell you of the luck I have had here? 
how my uncle, Mr. Keppel, made over to me 
his rooms, till the Spring? Such a charming 
place it is, which for a long time Whistler 
wanted to get from him. 

It is before seven in the morning: I write 
by the window (which fills a broad low arch) 
the two sides swinging in. A few feet below, 
on the sidewalk, the gardeners from the 
country have their plants; they come in the 
evening, two or three nights in the week — 
arrange their stock, and then curl up and 
go to sleep on the soft edge of the sidewalk 
(next the river) amongst the stephanotis and 

6 



tuberoses — the perfume kindly coming in at 
my open window, all night long. 

I can nearly touch the heads of the passers- 
by from my window-seat ; the river is always 
beautiful and the trees. 

I am as happy as I ever hope to be, these 
times ; all day long, from 9 till 5, I draw from 
the Greek marbles in the Louvre. Think of 
it ! These long summer days I work amongst 
the most beautiful things in the great cool 
galleries ! The tourists are more or less of 
a nuisance, but I don't think of them now — 
I don't even see them. 

Last night, W. K. and I sat in the gardens 
of the Luxembourg, talked of many things, 
and saw the great pale moon rise from behind 
the trees — golden clouds still in the sky, the 
sun just set, the air full of the scents of 
flowers and moist lawns. What a thing it is 
to live and to feel — to know all that is best 
and beautiful in life — and there is much. It 
only makes the whole business of life more 
of a puzzle though — for if we are conscious 
of what is beautiful, we feel with double 
force, what is not : but, taking it all round, it's 
a fine thing to live. 

I'm in a queer muddled up condition; this 
going to England and finding how I have 
broken aw^ay from the husks of religion, of 
suppression, has made me desire to get away 
from all that I am unable to see clearly is of 
service to me: to start afresh, and, through 
life and work, to arrive at what is essential. 
I see no other way. 



Aug.,i897' Till you come, B., I shall work on from 
the Greeks and the Japs — long, cool, quiet 
days in the Louvre: I am as happy as I ever 
hope to be. And yet it will be with intense 
eagerness that I shall go south, to try again 
my luck with the brush — a thing I feel I 
understand now, as I never have before. 
Working this little has done me good and 
largely increased my interest in the technical 
side of painting. My drawing comes on well, 
I think; I am trying for construction and 
beauty of line, swinging things in, in as large 
a way as possible, aiming at a flowing long 
line and always thinking of design. I can't 
imagine how I could have been so blind to the 
Japanese before: they take me off my feet! 
What pleases me most is, that all this seeing 
does not disturb my own outlook. I work 
from 9 till 5 in the galleries, with an occa- 
sional short break for a look at Giorgione's 
"Fete Champetre." How the name brings 
back the fete at Burlingame — than which I 
have never seen anything more beautiful. It 
has been a wet Sunday; I have spent the 
morning writing and reading; now the sky is 
intense blue, the colour clean and beautiful. 
The river flows by outside and the trees 
against the window move briskly in the cool 
breeze. Life is very good. The vintage is 
close upon us, as with you; would that you 
were here. Sometimes I gasp aloud for 
California, but I'm happy here. 

The Valasquez in the National Gallery 
were stunners, but lacking the exquisite 
sensitive painting of the Whistler "Mother." 
It was a healthier sense of painting, a more 

8 



robust way of seeing than Whistler's that 
Valesquez had: but not more beautiful, 
though, it may be, more splendid. Manet is 
a corker ! What a healthy, out-of-door sort of 
painting his is! That nude woman and 
negress in the Luxembourg! there never was 
more splendid painting — never such joy in 
the manipulation of tools. It was this love 
of paints and brushes that drove him to ex- 
pression, not the beauty of life; I would not 
call him an artist, but to painters and all who 
have the painter's instinct, Manet must ever 
be a god. The Greek marbles ! the Japanese 
things ! Holy smoke ! they understood 
arrangement! I'm going to have an easel 
in the Louvre and draw just like dam crazy, 
till you get here ! 

Of the men of 1830, they are poorly repre- 
sented: one lovely Corot; two, not altogether 
lovely; a nice Rousseau, as you know: "The 
Gleaners" of Millet — but what a disappoint- 
ing business these minor men are! Millet's 
colour and technique are rank — but it's great 
work, all the same. I feel as I compare the 
Chevannes decoration with the broken fresco 
by Botticelli, that C.'s colour sense is not a 
great one and that his sense of painting is nil ; 
but you bet he knows what decoration is. But 
these same things of BotticeUi's — ! 

I was never so happy in my work, never 
so sure of its being worth while, as since I 
got here. This is my programme : a thorough 
study of the Greeks, of the Japanese, of 
Giorgione, of Whistler (for painting) — the 
two first, mainly. I'm going to get solid with 
the marbles, the Japanese and the old Italians. 
9 



My head and eyes are straightening out, after 
my accident, and pretty nearly time, too. 

I am not doing the orthodox things in the 
Louvre: I go around and find the beautiful 
things, like those joyous ladies with tam- 
bourines and cymbals, on the great vases, and 
try to get their joy "into my stomach" (as 
K. does with nature). This afternoon I spent 
making a drawing from a water colour by 
Masanobu, such a swishingly swell arrange- 
ment. Golly! how these great Japanese 
knew ! There is a giant thing of the sea, fine 
in colour, by Hokousai — an arrangement by 
Outamaro, the back of a woman's head, the 
hair black, and a child. Gosh ! ! Then a 
beautiful, beautiful composition by Kiyonaga, 
three girls on a balcony, with the sea beyond. 
What artists they were ! 

I have now no doubt about my own work: 
it is just a matter of time till I get my brush 
thoroughly under control; I shall do land- 
scape at least of a pretty decent kind — and it's 
bigger things than that I'm aiming at. . . . 

If I had a wish, what do you think I would 
wish for? Nothing less than the physique of 

Miss ; what work one could get through 

if one was built that way. 

When I get back, I'm going off to the wilds 
at once: I think I shall try to get a room 
over at Point Bonita, up in the old lighthouse, 
and work like mad. I'm making hay now, 
but just about a year ahead I always see a 
quiet strip of life, where there are no physical 
disturbances and no interruptions: the sort 
of Hfe led by Marius after the death of 

10 



Flavian. But this strip of fair water ought 
to be within reach of my bark now, if it is 
ever to be, and sometimes I feel that I am 
there, as I work through the long, quiet days 
in the Louvre. I know, two years hence, I 
shall have no doubt about my having been 
entirely happy in Paris. 

I suppose it is just part of the game, and, 
until we can live quite simply and uncon- 
sciously, the great happiness of our lives 
must seem always to be somewhere in the 
future 

This painting pictures to suit a low-minded 
public! These painters are as clever as the 
dickens, but what is cleverness good for but 
the picking of pockets? 

About our walk. We left Paris by train for Sept., 1897. 
Vernon, a village midway between this and 
Rouen. We wanted to hear Vienne "open the 
organ," if that's the right way to put it, at the 
church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours (a gin- 
gerbread and tinsel construction on the out- 
skirts of Rouen), so we started an hour 
after the service at St. Sulpice. 

It was good to see the open country again, 
after all the weeks in the city: and such a 
beautiful country, this north of France, is. 
The walk from Vernon, through an open, 
moonlit valley to Presagny, was a thing to stay 
with one forever : the air was sharp, the road 
hard under foot and the landscape spread, 
great and simple, in the dim yet clear light of 
the moon — the river, here and there, showing 
beneath us, for we were rather higher than 
the floor of the valley. 
II 



At Presagny, we found all we could wish 
for, and the pleasure of waking next morning 
with the singing of birds in the apple trees — 
the clear, cold September air — all within 
reach of the senses, was great. 

After breakfast we struck out briskly; the 
hour was early and the air keen, the sky clear 
and blue. All this French country is beau- 
tiful: the one thing I most noted in it, was a 
certain elegance which even the most dilapi- 
dated and humble villages retain. All places 
spoke of care and love: the people themselves 
seeming simple and good, taking life as it 
comes, without complaint and without ques- 
tion. One sees plainly what it was that made 
Millet paint "The Man with the Hoe," for in 
all of the faces (perhaps more in the women 
than in the men) there is a terrible sternness, 
as if Hfe were but one long struggle; when- 
ever one looks at the soil upon which they 
live, there is little doubt about the struggle. 
The strange thing is, that in the midst of the 
strife and stress, they still take thought and 
give the time to do things carefully, for the 
sake of their children and their children's 
children. It is this that makes the French 
life beautiful; no conscious reaching after 
"the beauty that has come in again," but 
just a great reverence for the home and the 
land where they and their fathers were born. 
The beauty that springs from this, is quite 
apart from "the maid and the violet-shade" — 
and it is healthy and sweet. 

Vienne's playing was great, and one thing 
took me back bodily, to the church in Oak- 
land. Vienne is charming, quite different 

12 



from Widor — the latter being iron all through, 
appearing to have complete control of every 
faculty and utterly apart from the world at 
large; Vienne is the sort of man to make a 
good friend, very fine and sympathetic in 
construction, I imagine. Both men strike one 
as being entirely wrapped up in their work 
and, like most true artists, simple and gener- 
ous where their art is concerned. 



Yesterday morning I went up to the Oct., 1897. 
Luxembourg: I saw with fresh pleasure the 
big Manet and the Whistler. There is a great 
quantity of rubbish in the gallery, but one 
always comes back with new joy to these 
two men. W. came, and we walked down to 
St. Sulpice, a short walk, through the sharp 
air. How I love this clear, cold weather that 
we have had lately — one could not have better 
weather for work: the sky blue, the trees a 
golden purple, still holding some leaves: and 
men and women, here and there, selling vio- 
lets, which I never can resist — they so take 
me back to Piedmont. At St. Sulpice, the 
Archbishop of London was bossing the show, 
and they were to sing Widor's mass for two 
organs. It was out of sight ! I wish you 
might have heard it and the thing he played, 
the first movement from the Sixth. They 
have the full choir now, and what a joy it is 
to listen! 

I have read "Tess." The realism of the 
whole thing leaves one seared and in misery, 
that such things are real; that such injustice 
is possible, is almost beyond conception. It 
13 



seems to me that it was Hardy's keen sense 
of this injustice that drove him to writing 
this book: to me, it will always be great on 
account of the force with which he has stated 
his indignation at a state of affairs for which 
both men and women are responsible. Bierce, 
on the other hand, writes without any such 
end as Hardy uses realism for. B. seems a 
man devoid of the sense of beauty ; devoid of 
creative force, but with a marvelous sense of 
words and an analytical power that is 
satirical and morbid. 

My eyes are better, but not what I would 
wish; my headaches have taken wing and 
my spirits are well back. 

And now I am, at last, looking out for 

. How glad I shall be to see him, I 

can't realize, myself. To have a few friends 
such as he is, would be reward enough for hav- 
ing lived, if one were to fail of all else. 

I am staying with W. He is very kind; a 
fine fellow down to the soles of his feet. 

Will you remember me to your mother? 
I think of her sometimes as I saw her that 
last night. Whistler is the only living man 
who could have painted her. He seems to 
me, more and more, one of the greatest artists, 
and perhaps the greatest painter, I know. 



Nov., 1897. This little room of W.'s is very pleasant: 
all tidy, with a bright fire, and I am sitting 
up in the neat little soldier bed, writing on 
that painting of mine, the one of the big hill 
and the eucalyptus tree and the little houses 
and the stream in the foreground — the motive 

14 



that came from behind your house. Just at 
present things are more convenient here than 
at my house, where the workmen are, still. 
We moved back, w^hen, for no reason that I 
can trace, I caught cold. We decided it 
would be better for me over here. The last 
time I had a cold was at the end of December 
last year; and I lay looking on the hills, 
away up beyond the Requa house. My own 
hills ! How glad I shall be to get back ; but 
I must learn to drawn first. During the past 
fortnight I have been working at Carla- 
rossi's: and as it is scarcely light when I rise 
in the morning, there is not much time to 
write, for I am resting my eyes in the even- 
ing, after the long day's drawing. I have 
had bad luck since I have been in Paris, but 
I said all along I wouldn't growl if they 
would leave me my eyes. 

It has been a good fortnight; spent within 
dirty green walls, covered with the scrapings 
of many palettes, with clever and stupid 
drawings, and in company of so many good- 
natured and otherwise, amongst the crowd call- 
ing themselves ''art students" — students so far 
from beautiful in themselves, that one wonders 
what their works will be. 

I have just read ''Vain Fortune," by 
George Moore: another of the kind I don't 
care for; just a handful of unhappy lives, 
held up for inspection — a book devoid of any- 
thing beautiful, it seems to me 

You say that, after all, it is the composer 
and creator who have the good time; but I 
am convinced that the only real and enduring 
happiness comes from the consciousness that 
15 



we are of use — and that we are giving 
pleasure. I have been feeling this more 
clearly of late, on account of a little thing 
that happened not so long ago. W. and 
I, in a condition of concentrated blues, 
had gone for a walk to the top of Mont- 
martre. The day was grey and life looked 
empty enough to me; I had been twice 
to the oculist and, as Huck Finn said of 
his prayers, ''Nuthin' come of it." It began 
to drizzle, after that to rain steadily, so on 
our way back we took refuge in the Church 
of La Trinitie. Here, in the gloom of the 
autumn evening, they were preparing for a 
funeral: the big church, all hung in black, 
was very dark, and, between one thing and 
another, I put in some good solid wishes that 
it was my funeral. 

In the midst of this, a tottering old woman 
asked me to help her down the steps upon 
which we stood, and all I regretted was that 
there were so few steps, for I felt entirely 
happy for some time — for some days after: — 
and later, talking about selfishness and unhap- 
piness with W. K., I mentioned this incident, 
and he said at the time he had envied me 
very much. 

I say to myself : "The architect, the doctor, 
are really of use in the world" — and then I 
recall certain little paintings of Corot's, not 
much bigger than one's hand, that have made 
the world more beautiful; certain little verses 
that have done as much for me, and the 
bigger things that you and W. have played 
— and so I am content and happy to go on 
and, if necessary, do nothing more than paint 

i6 




THE VALLEY: PIEDMONT 
1895 



little pictures. In this day of realism, we 
who feel the beauty of life, are just as neces- 
sary as the physician or the architect or the 
teacher. We, as surely, are provided to keep 
the life of the world sweet. All this is fine 
to think of and helps to keep one happy in 
one's work. I remember well our talking 
on this subject, as we came home, after that 
walk which I enjoyed so much. Heavens! 
how fine it is to be out of doors, and how 
much more we are ourselves there than in 
drawing-rooms. 

I can't tell you of the beauty of Paris, now, 
for all that I feel it so keenly. The gardens, 
as I go to or come from the class, will always 
remain clear and distinct in my memory: the 
bare trees, purple against the full golden, blue 
of the evening sky — here and there a few 
radiant leaves, — the ample green of the lawns, 
the swing of the gravel walks and all the 
world, poor and rich, rejoicing in the good 
weather; and fat, fluffy pigeons coming with 
condescension to be fed, while the blackbirds 
and the thrushes in the tops of the horse- 
chestnuts whistle, and the ducks make a great 
quacking and flapping in their little ponds. 

I have the first volume of the Book of Isaiah, 
in the new, readable form. It is so fine, so 
grand. I must have them all, and the Gos- 
pels ; for in spite of Rev. and Rev. 

and many of their kind, I can still feel 

that happiness is only to be had by following 
the essence of the teaching of Christ. I don't 
think I shall ever care to go to church again, 
however ... 



17 



Thank you for the pens. They came safe, 
all but one, and it, poor thing, had its beak 
crossed; it reminded me of a chicken I once 
owned. Owing to the crossing of its beak, 
its breath came and went in a ponderous 
fashion. It was called "Breather." 

I have been having such a good time, lately, 
at the life class; but the drawing is fearfully 
hard work. Still, I am going to stay with 
it till it comes. I must, for once I can draw 
I shall do really big landscape and heaven 
only knows what else. It excites me always 
to think of what is ahead, once I can draw 
with freedom. I want to be a workman, pure 
and simple ; at present I am a labourer. With 
just a month or two's painting (for vacation) 
I want to spend the next three or four years 
studying form, and if I don't get somewhere 
it won't be my fault. 

It is Sunday again. The afternoon is 
warm and summer-like, the sky blue and the 
houses stand golden through the trees, with 
simple shadows, the river reflecting it all, with 
here and there a break of blue or gold upon 
its surface; then the bare trees just outside 
my window — and you see it all. It is very 
beautiful, and a thing likely to hang in my 
mind for many a year. 



Villefranche At last I have escaped from Paris, and it 
)l!!^^ol' was high time, for somehow or other, Paris 
and I don't get on well together. . . . 

It is grey today, and my thermometer is 
low, as usual. Yesterday the sun was warm 
and the air smelled faintly of Spring flowers, 

i8 



Dec, 1897. 




PINES: ST. HOSPICE 

1897 



of which there are many. It is very good to 
be out of doors, once again. It is not the 
most paintable country one could imagine: on 
my left, as I write, are the Alps ; on my right, 
the Mediterranean, which stretches to the hori- 
zon : and yet it is not as beautiful as the coun- 
try north of the Cliff House — rather, it's not so 
paintable. . . . 

Today, it rains in torrents and I have just 
finished washing my brushes, after a good 
morning's painting. I can feel it coming! 
I know now I've gone ahead lots, since I left 
home. But I am at present awfully lonely; 
just as soon as I get down to hard work I 
shall be quite happy and B. has promised to 
come down for a while. I was a goose to 
come without a passport — fortifications and 
soldiers everywhere and to stumble into the 
error of sketching these government works, 
would mean being 'Vun in" for a spy. As 
it is, I am a marked man, for I have been 
"shooed off'^ the government ground twice 
by sentinels, and have been seen prowling 
round fortresses for miles into the Alps. My 
red hair and blue sweater and little Chinese 
blouse, are distinctive, to say nothing of always 
having a sketch-book or paints along. So 
who knows. I may be taken and shot! 

Death seems peculiarly repulsive, here in 
France. In this strange little town, I beheld 
in the drizzle, yesterday, a bedraggled funeral 
procession, composed of dirty little Italian 
girls, a wooden crucifix in the front, after it 
a chanting priest in dirty linen, a boy with a 
candle, and then a number of small girls, 
carrying a little coffin. It was dismal in the 
19 



extreme and I pray that it may be my lot to 
die in California, and amongst friends. 

I have read "The Well Beloved" by Hardy, 
lately: not so desperately serious as "Tess," 
it interested me greatly on account of its 
bearing on the question of the artist's marry- 
ing. It was the misfortune of this hero, to 
be constantly falling head over heels into 
the depths of love, and then, inevitably, he 
would find at the climax, that his "well be- 
loved" had flitted, and he was left with a 
lady on his hands. 

The true artist, it seems to me, is born 
(whether for good or ill) with the one desire 
before which all else falls away and becomes 
secondary. This desire is to grasp the perfect, 
which always seems to be just around the 
corner. In a wild-goose chase of this kind, 
I am as good as sure, that marriage must 
be only a complication: for if the chase goes 
on, the one who is not the artist (man or 
woman) suffers, and if the chase ceases, dis- 
content must come of it, to the artist — and 
one will say to the other "Look at all I 
have given up for you!" You understand 
when I say "artist," I mean the "genu-ine 
article." I may be all wrong in this. 



St. Jean, We left Villefranche yesterday, in a whirl 

Jan., 1898. of wind and rain, for this little village farther 

along the coast toward Monte Carlo. 

It is a clean, gusty morning: the sea, all 
blue and green and broken with white surf, 
stretches away from below the window, to 
meet the grey sky, which the sun breaks in a 

20 



sort of petulant way. To the left, the cliffs 
of Monaco rise with a solemn dignity and 
splendour. They bring back with vividness 
and pleasure, the coast cliffs of Marin County : 
but they lack the great beauty of line that 
pervades the Californian hills and they are 
also less human. B. arrived on Christmas 
eve, and we spent a happy day, loafing about 
the very beautiful town of Nice. Such a 
colour as the town has, all rose and gold and 
a great expanse of sea. 

I have at last begun to do things: up to 
this I have been shaking the dust of the schools 
from off my feet. Nevertheless, injurious 
as the schools are, I intend to work the next 
two years in the life-class in San Francisco; 
but I am going to model and draw with the 
brush, rather than with the point, for all my 
instinct is for the former tool and I will get 
what I want sooner, that way. 

I am working upon a canvas: a line of 
snow-capped Alps against the gold-blue sky 
of evening; this line comes close to the top 
of the canvas: then a spot of gold light on 
the lower range of hills in shadow : below this, 
one great blue shadow fills the valley and falls 
to a low line of grass-covered foreground, 
from which two or three slight, wind-blown 
pines rise from either side, into the golden 
sunlight. 

There is an old salon man of sixty, at work 
down here; strong as an ox and much more 
vulgar, but very amusing. Evidently, he is one 
of the acknowledged men, has exhibited at the 
salon for forty years and is all be-medaled. I 
don't care for his work, though it is the kind 

21 



that counts, in Paris. He asked me to show 
him mine, and so I did. It sort of jolted him; 
nevertheless, when his wife said, "Cest drole 
ca!" she got it in the neck, so to speak: and 
our landlady, also, for asking, ''What the devil 
is it ? " It was funny to hear him defend the 
canvas. 

. . . I did not tell you, though, what has 
happened since I wrote; how the silver-grey 
almond trees against the grey-blue sea, have 
starred themselves with rosy-white until now 
they are heavy masses of bloom, broken with 
the silver of the branches and flecked with the 
green of another Spring. And the birds are 
returning from some Winter resort of their 
own, perhaps Africa, which is not so far away. 
One hears them, now and then of a morn- 
ing, in the amandiez — flowering outside the 
window. 

Last night, dark and cloudy, we walked 
along the cliffs of the little peninsula of St. 
Hospice. The sea, quite black in the darkness, 
broke very splendidly against the rocks, far 
below, and the warm wind quietly moved the 
pines. . . . 

I am being urged, before I go back, to show 
my work in London and New York — but, 
heavens ! I have no intention of doing that, for 
years to come ! To think of that kind of thing, 
success, reputation, is worse than foolishness 
and fatal to good work. No, I am a student 
and must remain one till I graduate by right of 
technical attainment. My road is clear enough : 
I know entirely what I want to do, and that is 
more than most men of my age can say. I am 
now, too, in the clutch of school influence — no, 

22 



not school influence at all — but the persistent 
study of form has made me see, out of doors, 
first and last, form (which is right enough so 
long as one does not allow it to disturb one). 
By much drawing and painting I shall come 
back to my former perception and then too, 
be master of my tools. 

I hope your work goes to your liking: 
though as you are an artist, it is quite sure not 
to be doing so: it never does, till we become 
careless; but it is all fun, of a bitter enough 
kind sometimes. I, in the dream of open air 
and the country, in a Paris atelier, told you that 
once I knew how to draw, it would all be plain 
sailing and joy. Well, I know now I was 
wrong, dead wrong. I know now that to do 
what I want to do, will mean pains and aches 
of a perpetual kind. But we all choose the 
pain! 



I enjoyed greatly the journey through Italy, Paris, 
from the French Riviera. After the landscape P^^-> ^^9^- 
I had tried so hard and vainly to paint, the 
landscape of Italy sings a new song in my 
memory. It is as though the parts I love best 
in California, Piedmont and Marin, had been 
Hved in and tended for many generations, by a 
race loving the soil and life and caring about 
all ; and I think of it now, the country around 
Genoa and Padua and Verona, as of the colour 
of precious stones and of fruit ripened under a 
full sun. 

We had really very good fun getting to Ven- 
ice; we took slow trains (and the fastest are 
slow enough), and at every station we got off 
23 



and ran through the town, and then stopped the 
night in some town of interest. Of all the 
beautiful things I saw, the front of St. Mark's 
at Venice, in the late evening sunlight, was the 
swellest by ever so much. 

It is still all a blur — more in my heart than 
in my head, I think. And the many churches 
with their full warm colour and lavish old 
gilding, are all one with the landscape — the 
sedate and quiet people, still so beautiful. 

It has cleared my road for me, and I see quite 
plainly where I am going. Withal, I come 
back a much humbler person. 



P^^^^f^^ Yesterday was Mi Careme, and there was 
i8q8 ^ &^^^t to-do on the Boulevards. We were 
well in it: all afternoon in the thick of the 
crowd, trying how much confetti we could hold 
in our eyes and still see. If I close my eyes 
today, I see things like impressionistic land- 
scapes, made of spots of paper of different 
bright colors. 

There was great excitement on the Boul. 
Montmartre; it was while the cavalcade 
passed that a lot of people in the windows and 
balconies along the route threw oranges and 
candy and biscuits to the crowd below: they 
also let down bottles of champagne, which they 
would keep dangling over the heads of the 
crowd in a way that excited them wildly. 
Sooner or later the bottle would be captured 
by some one endowed by Providence with a 
long reach. There were others, high up in the 
buildings, who threw down oranges, and these 
fitted very quick some heads in the crowd, 

24 



clothing the owners in a thin, transparent yel- 
low and a glowing indignation, which mani- 
fested itself in eggs, — the spectators in the 
windows having to retire, as they had notions 
of their own as to how eggs should be taken. 

The cavalcade was gay, in the grey-blue of 
the Grande Boulevards — the high, piping 
colour of paper roses and fancy costumes be- 
came pearl-like and gentle, en masse; the 
chestnut trees, astir once again with breaking 
green, were full of long streamers of coloured 
papers: the roadway and footpaths were 
ablaze with confetti : and all Paris was out to 
see it, and like only Parisians, they were wildly 
gay without any sign of ill temper. 

Yes, as you say, the Zola trial was a farce ; 
the Parisian men are N. G. — small, excitable, 
vicious ; but for the French of the Provinces 
I have a profound admiration. They are a 
simple, sober, brave people, taking life as they 
meet it, without complaint. . . . 

Here, too, the whole business of the Latin 
Quarter is so deadly tiresome and such a 
to-do is made about the very unimportant 
matter of painting, that one longs for the quiet 
of home, where, if such things are less under- 
stood, they are much healthier. 

I hope your work goes to your pleasure; 
the susceptibility to discouragement is part of 
the price we pay for the privilege of being 
artists : but it's worth while and perhaps we 
are equally susceptible to reaction, from dis- 
couragement to hope. At present I feel happy 
about my work. I have determined to send 
nothing to the exhibitions for a year or two; 
there is no hurry and I wonder, every now and 

25 



then, whether they are worth while. When I 
saw the N. Y. exhibitions and realized that 
they were nothing more than large editions of 
the Hopkins' show, that the Royal Academy 
was the same thing, larger still — I began to 
feel that it all counts nothing. However, it 
bothers me very little, the matter of showing; 
what I am glad about is, that I shall have such 
a fine chance to do things. 

^^Pi' . . . It is strange how differently one 
Apr., I 9 . j.ggaj.(js jifg -when one has a warm sun and a 
clear sky above one's head: and how out of 
place the terrible facts of life are, when one 
encounters them, under such conditions. There 
is nothing so convincing of the divine right- 
ness of the teaching of Christ, as His fearless 
regarding of the world and life : it's a wonder- 
ful thing, that He should have said the last 
word, so long ago. 

As to ''the refining influences of art ? " — 
well, I don't know ! I meet too many men here 
who have subjected themselves to the ''refin- 
ing influences," with no happy result: men 
who are "refined" (superficially) to the last 
degree, and nothing can so rouse me to the 
same pitch of rowdyism and vulgarity, as 
these same lady-like gentlemen. The fact is 
that, except to the healthy minded, who see 
things in fairly true relation, art is a snare and 
a delusion: Stevenson pointed out that the 
calling of the artist is to give pleasure, the 
calling of other men is to tvork — often 
enough to disagreeable work; so it stands 
to reason, that unless at the bottom of 

26 



his heart the artist be a man — of serious mind 
and with an eye quick to see his responsibihty 
in Hfe, he inevitably becomes what many good 
women miscall "refined" — and avoid: what 
the true woman asks for is manliness in men, 
just as a man detests the masculine qualities in 
a woman. If any one asked me what kind of 
a man / like, I would say: "The man who 
knows the world and loves his mother": that 
man is not likely to go far wrong. Life is full 
of pitfalls to the ignorant, and the "sheltered 
life" is the cause of much unhappiness : — many 
failures. 

... I doubt if art turns often the thoughts 
toward God, except as the mind and heart, 
perceiving, sees another facet of His great 
good-will, in having made the world beautiful. 
In a world where the imposed conditions for 
every creature coming into it, are such as to 
make him more and more the Materialist, there 
must be some antidotes for life: and art, it 
seems to me, is one of them. To the artist it 
is given to perceive the beauties and the joys 
of life — as to the teacher is given the grasp 
upon hidden truths : and these, through the 
strength of their perceptions are compelled to 
give their visions to the mass of the workers : 
workers who have neither the power nor the 
time to search for themselves. 



I have just heard the "Symphonic Pathet- April, 1898. 
ique" given by Hans Richter. I am all of a 
shake still — the theme of the second movement 
is going through me, and the last ! — how it 
leaves one sobered. It seems to me that he has 
27 



laid bare his soul — a very great soul — and 
after it the world looks ordinary and smaller, 
and I am feeling a strange pity for all these 
creatures around me who sit playing checkers 
and discussing art — God help them ! — discuss- 
ing art ! After today, there is nothing to dis- 
cuss. I am afraid I can't write a decent letter 
— this music has put a weight upon me : I feel 
as though I were doing someone a wrong: 
just as I feel when someone I care for has told 
me of some mental pain : as if I had no right 
to be happy — rather, that for the time being, 
I feel as if I should cease to exist apart from 
the sufferer. It seems as if this touch from 
a great man had told me things, intimate and 
sacred: although I haven't a remote idea of 
what they are or what they mean ; only, I feel 
as if, for the moment, I should be alone — for- 
gotten of myself. The ridiculous desire to 
pray, for the peace of his soul, comes upon me, 
and I should do it if it didn't come upon me 
in just that way — his soul is all right ! 

I tell myself I am a fool to pretend I feel 
like this : — ^that it is all pretense : that it really 
does not touch me. This is the curse of a 
Puritan ancestry — a Puritan desire to doubt 
one's self, that God may be glorified. Heaven 
help that kind of a God, and make me simple. 

Heavens and earth ! picture exhibitions and 
salons ! What worthlessness one finds — the 
whole business is full of pettiness and desire for 
recognition. The sight of a drawing by Millet 
thrills one and makes the rest all weak and 
worthless. The drawing I think of is a slight 
sketch of a shepherd-girl seated in a field: 
and in its presence the greatest men of today 

28 



are forgotten. There is something in it that 
asks one what ail the talk one hears here 
means : what all this scurrying and haste for 
salons mean. Good Lord, to have done that 
sketch ! to have written a line, with this same 
great power — that is what we students, if we 
have conceit enough, might strive for, instead 
of thinking of the crown of deadly nightshade, 
with which the world crowns those who pander 
to it! 

It is a most humbling thing to have heard 
this symphony of Tschaikovsky's : after this, 
I shall think less (and heaven knows how it 
has lately dropped from my mind) of any 
response to my work, except from the few 
friends I know. Here, even the men who 
should know and feel, have sold what birth- 
right they may once have had, for a mention at 
the salon. 

I have no idea yet as to whether I shall go 
or stay. I don't much care — either will suit 
me. I enjoy the drawing and think, at the 
same time, of the irises in flower on the Marin 
hills and of the larks, whistling amongst the 
high eucalyptus blossoms. I shall be glad to 
be there, although life could not be happier 
than it is : and I thank God that I was here to 
hear what I heard today. 

Last evening, as I came through the gardens 
of the Luxembourg, in the glow of the pale 
golden light, a blackbird with his breast 
against an unfolding gold and pink and pale 
green chestnut spire, sang his song to the 
Spring and the new moon : and the silver-grey 
pigeons sat in the bare trees with their heads 
to the slight April breeze, like ships at anchor. 
29 



In one place, the rhododendrons are burst- 
ing, gloriously, into purple and crimson clus- 
ters amidst dark green leaves; and the chil- 
dren play differently: an intoxication (that 
for the most part, I fear only the child Parisian 
feels) seems to be rife amongst them. It is the 
birthright of the simple — this joy in the change 
of the seasons, and especially this change from 
Winter to Spring. 

Is it going to be war? The papers here 
think so; and here am I, with a love divided 
between my native and adopted countries, and 
feeling that the one country I could really fight 
for is California (hardly a possibility of specu- 
lation of that sort becoming necessary, unless 
all Europe is involved). 

We are exulting in the fact that Zola has 
won his appeal: that he is to have another 
trial. It is most unexpected. 

You ask why I couldn't paint the Riviera 
country: I guess it was because it didn't hit 
me hard enough. It was somewhat spectacular 
— sharp in colour, too. It was the landscape 
between Genoa and Milan that made me want 
to paint; however, I shall paint but little till 
I am back in California. Meantime, the front 
of St. Mark's alone made the year worth 
while : now, the symphony today has doubled 
it: and I have a considerably better under- 
standing of drawing, too, thrown in. 



April, 1898. Spring has come, as Stevenson said it would, 
"bringing birds and flowers," and Paris is as 
gay and beautiful as it ever will be — all the 
Boulevards green with newly-broken buds — 

30 




THE MARNE : CHARENTON 
1898 



the distant buildings swim in a violet mist, 
while great white clouds roll in the deep blue 
sky. 

Meantime the papers talk of war within 
twenty-four hours, and ardent American stu- 
dents form bands of volunteers and write many 
letters to the newspapers. There is one of 
these sitting opposite me as I write, and he 
"dameth" a great deal for his size. I haven't 
much use for his kind. 

There is a great row here in the club. On 
the night of Mi Careme, Madame Mai and the 
girl called Julie, who both attend to the tables 
(the former having been concierge for years 

and years before X got his finger into 

the club's affairs) — both, simple, good-hearted 
country people, and hardly looked upon as ser- 
vants, were installed in nurse-maid caps at the 

instigation of X , against their will and 

against the wish of many of the simpler mem- 
bers of the club, who foresaw, truly enough, 
various attempts at running the club ''in style." 
My main contention was that (as Madame 
Mai used, in the past, to run the restaurant 
quite independently, taking the risks entirely 
into her own hands, and always keeping a kind 
of motherly eye out for the ramshackle set of 
men and boys who belonged to the club), it 
was a mean business to see her crowded down 
to the position of a common, domestic servant. 

Well, we took off the caps, covered every- 
thing with confetti, and went off with the caps. 
A meeting of directors was called : and forth- 
with a notice appeared on the board, noticing 
the irregularity and threatening any new 
offender with suspension. We tore down the 
31 



notice, took half of it, each, and I promptly- 
put my half into the grand complaint box 
(newly estabHshed). 

It seems that this has jolted the manager 
very hard : and you may hear, next letter, that 
I have had to submit to the disgrace of being 
''thrown out." 

Since I wrote last, we have heard the 
"Ninth" Symphony conducted by Hans Rich- 
ter, at the Colonne concert. It was late at 
night — we had been dining at C. F.'s, and 
we just got standing room for this, the last 
thing on the programme. It was tremendous ! 
The parts that hit me hardest were after the 
voices (the choir itself being a big one) came 
against the great orchestra. 

We have heard, too, a concert of badly sung 
songs of Tschaikovsky's — but his "Slavic 
March" was big in effect, altho' the orchestra 
(Lamereux) was miserable. The Russian an- 
them, which keeps pounding and booming 
through the thing, making the whole very 
splendid. We heard "Carmen," too, at the 
Opera Comique. The music was bewitching, 
and the kissing, as I remarked to W., was 
handsome. There is, however, something en- 
raging to me about the attenuated movements 
of actors ; and in opera, especially. I become 
quite crazy during that long duet in Lohengrin, 
for instance. These two people, singing away 
in the street, (by no means dressed for the 
open) and from time to time plunging around 
corners and across the stage, like cats with dis- 
jointed tails : while I wait for business to begin 
again. 

I have been sketching a good deal lately, 

32 



down at St. Cloud. B., W. and I had a long 
walk down there, on Sunday afternoon: 
through the woods, to Fontenay aux Roses. 
The woods were carpeted with the beautiful 
white anemone. We call it the "wind-flower" 
in England. And the lesser celandine, with its 
keen, yellow, star-like flower and dark green 
leaf, so clean and vigorous. The woods were 
spotted with the beautiful wild white cherry in 
flower : all young green and white ; the black- 
birds sang everywhere and the new green of 
the chestnut leaves mingled with the gold of 
the sheaths, that such a short time ago en- 
closed them. In a little while the leaves will 
have become more golden; the splendid pyra- 
mid-shaped spikes of blossom will cover the 
trees, rosy-gold and purple and white: and 
the nightingales will sing above the quiet river 
and in those great groves and terraces, that 
always seem to me so full of classic feeling. 



Your letter is very beautiful: full of the May,i8g8. 
most vivid pictures for me : It brings back to 
my mind the memory of long days I have 
spent in the hills — days like this, when the 
rain fell in a fine powder and the ribbons of 
mist garlanded the eucalyptus tops. 

I am so glad to hear that you liked that can- 
vas of Muhrman's. I never had a doubt of 
him : not that I would place him amongst the 
greatest, by any means, for there have been 
so few really great. To me he is away ahead 
of any man painting landscape here. The fact 
of the matter is, that unless a man be a poet, 
as Muhrman is, or an interpreter of character, 
33 



as Degas is, there is little sense in his painting, 
for apart from these things, painting is only- 
justified by its relation to architecture. Of 
course a man without gifts is at liberty to 
paint for his own amusement, but a life of 
amusement is hardly the thing to make it 
worth while to live; one meets men of this 
kind over here, and all that one can say is, 
"God help them." 

To be worth anything, there must be some 
sternness in Hfe: we must care: and if we 
do, we are bound to suffer. I suppose it is this 
fear of suffering that makes the Parisian what 
he is : mean, low and selfish. I refer to the 
man : I still feel that the woman of Paris has 
splendid and great qualities : but the conditions 
of life are all against her. 

It is noticeable that the men one meets here 
who have been through the siege and com- 
mune are made of altogether different material 
from the men of my age, who have seen no 
hardship. And the priests have a distinct line 
drawn amongst them, too, marking the distinc- 
tion between the artificial and esthetic life of 
the town and the simple life of the country — 
near to the great joys and sorrows of a brave 
people. And what a fine mark this genuine 
life of ready response makes upon a man or 
woman. 

Paris is sinking low and all France is tainted 
with the vice one knows to be rife here. It is a 
pity that only war or revolution can save them 
or bring them back, or save that nobility of 
character that Millet saw in the peasants of his 
country — for in the country it is not all lost. 



34 




THE BASIN : ST. CLOUD 
1898 



I heard W., two stories below me, the other 
night, playing upon the club piano : and under 
his hands this instrument (which I have come 
.since to believe is misunderstood) sang the 
Tocata from the Fifth, so that I could have 
sworn it was 'cellos and violins. . . . 

•The war is a bad business, and it is hard to 
get at the exact right and wrong of the case. 
There seems to be a necessity for war, or its 
equivalent, to give men fibre; there is too 
great a crowd studying art — too little manli- 
ness in men nowadays. 

We have had no good weather so far this June, 1898. 
month — constant rain. But one night, at St. 
Cloud, I was rewarded by seeing the sun go 
down, shining upon the blossoming chestnut 
trees, with a gradual golden bloom and a 
gloomy wealth of colour, in the great terraced 
avenues; the whole thing like some stately 
chant, so beautiful, so full of a living music 
the colour was — and, oh ! as night fell, and the 
sun sank and the gold left the great trees, with 
a kind of rhythm, the whole place changed in 
a magical way. The liquid blue of the clear 
sky seemed to have neither beginning nor end : 
and against it the trees stirred in the Spring 
breeze — the full, wet green of late Spring, in 
the blue of the rain-washed sky. 

And the way the new moon rises there — and 
the blackbirds call — and the way the silence 
falls — and is broken by another bird, who an- 
swers the echo of his own voice ! 

I can't describe it, and so far I cannot paint 
it — so beautiful, so full of an elegance too fine 
for words or paint. I wonder if you know the 

35 



place? One dreams of the concerts, of the 
fetes, of days not so long ago, when that ele- 
gance which so marks the whole place must 
have been echoed in the beautifully gowned 
women — who perhaps danced to the music of 
orchestras, beneath the great trees of the park, 
with its lawns and fountains. 

As I write, my heart is in the fight around 
Santiago, which must be in full swing. From 
time to time I wish I was there, in spite of the 
fact that I am no fighter, and have no convic- 
tion as to the right of it all. However, God 
speed them and give us an end to it. We had 
news of the fighting last night: vague news, 
and I woke at half past four this morning and 
thought of it all till I had to turn out, in the 
hope of further information. It was too early 
to find papers, so I hung around till Notre 
Dame opened, at six. The hour I spent there, 
in the grey quiet, was more to my liking than 
all the church-going I have done put together. 

Later, I got the N. Y. Herald and read the 
long account through a blur, with shivers in 
my bones : and thanked God that the men be- 
haved so splendidly. (That dragging of God's 
name into the business sounds queer, and lands 
me in complications I do not undertake to 
grapple with.) All the same, bravery moves 
me as almost nothing else does, and the Ameri- 
cans are behaving in a fine way. 

If I ever go a-soldiering, it will be about 
something I am quite convinced is worth my 
life: only, I would pray that I might be hit 
plump with a bullet where I live, or blown up 
with a shell — for I have horrors of outpost 

36 



duty in the night, with Death crawHng in the 
brush and yellow pestilence hovering in the 
silence overhead. The darkness falling, even 
upon country I know and love, fills me with 
inconceivable terrors, which in moments of 
credulity have scattered me in all directions 
and taken in tucks in my face and scalp, leav- 
ing me feeling contracted for hours. All of 
which leads me to conclude that I have about 
struck step with my destiny, in the somewhat 
childish calling of a painter. 

I wish I were home for many reasons : but 
all the same, we have a splendid time. We 
loathe the Parisians now, to our hearts con- 
tent, or rather discontent. We fight on the 
street with cockers who beat their horses and 
with the brutes who drive the great patient 
dray-horses that haul the quarried stone from 
the quais. Yesterday we put in a full after- 
noon of this rowdy work. We had a row with 
two carters : in the first we gained our point 
and compelled the man to get another horse; 
in this we were seconding two French women, 
who were protesting when we arrived. As 
we were seeing this through, another team was 
being lashed up the hill, in a perfectly vile way, 
and we left the first for the second scene of 
action. We settled him, too. No sooner had 
we reached the river, when we saw a man lash- 
ing three horses attached to a load of great 
blocks of stone, in a way that made us crazy 
and we roared at him in unison. The crowd 
was altogether against us, but by our interfer- 
ence the man was compelled to stop whipping 
the horses and in consequence he was unable 
to force the tired creatures up the hill; so 
Z7 



hurriedly he unhitched them, and with the 
mob following, calling us "Sale Etr angers," we 
reached a policeman. Everyone swore we 
must be arrested, so we were, and were taken 
across the city to the police station. And here 
a curious thing happened. Escorted by the 
policeman, the carter and his three horses and 
a huge mob, we fell, at the station, right into 
the arms of a little man we used to sit at table 
with and who had told us, as we joked, that 
if we got into trouble to let him know, as he 
was connected with the poHce. And now he 
received us with every manifestation of affec- 
tion, rising in his majesty and saying, ''Bon 
jour, Monsieur Art o or." Bon jour, Monsieur 
Keen." The crowd helped the carter to make 
a case against us, but after leaving our names 
and addresses, we were allowed to go. 

Animals and women in Paris are regarded 
alike : they have no feelings : "their first duty 
is to work" (as a damnable little Frenchman 
said to us the other day). Thank Heaven! I 
leave soon. Paris is become a nightmare! 
The Dreyfus case and Zola : the way the police 
side with the mob : the terrible way the beasts 
of men treat the women : I have absolutely no 
good thing left to say of the Parisians I see 
about me every day. I think my early letters 
to you showed rather a prejudice in their 
favour : there is none of that left now. They 
are in a wretched state: it is useless to look 
to them for great art or great anything else. 
We do not judge them hastily or superficially 
— we have lived a year amongst them now, 
not as most students, but amongst the French 
themselves. 

38 



With my charming relatives here, Paris is 
another place. We were all down at St. Cloud 
yesterday : I never knew the place more beau- 
tiful. If only I could have painted what I 
wanted there! But it was no go: I couldn't 
work it at all. 

From this on there will be a scurrying to get 
good-byes said and things packed up. I shall 
be very happy to find myself upon the train 
at New York : then I shall begin to feel as if 
I were really getting home. I can't tell you 
how good it is to think of : I feel as if I could 
ask no better place to spend my life than in 
Piedmont and the neighborhood. 



I am back in Wales, and the last days have Penarth, 
been very pleasant : I escaped from Paris with ^^S-^ 1S98. 
joy in my heart and apart from a few people, 
the river in Summer-evening light and the 
gardens in the cool of the morning — I regret 
nothing. 

Penarth is as beautiful as before. I go 
down to the water every morning and swim 
with the two boys. I shall do a good deal of 
work here, I expect, during the month, so you 
will be able to get some idea of the place when 
I return. My Father is pleased with my work, 
which is a great pleasure to me. About your 
work? How does it "march"? I used to talk 
about going off to the wilds and working 
alone, but lately I have changed my mind. I 
don't want to be a freak and I don't want to 
miss any of your recitals. From this on, there 
is no more St. Sulpice for me: Widor and 
Vienne are behind: ahead, for a month, is a 
39 



little Wesleyan chapel with a little cracked 
organ — ! 

Aren't you very glad the war is over? All 
the misery it has caused ! I hope I may reach 
home before the men begin to return: I 
should like to share the enthusiasm, the real- 
ization of what the men have faced and 
suffered. 

I am looking forward, now, to starting 
within ten days. You can't think of the joy 
getting back will mean or how glad I shall be 
to be home again and down to work for life. 
The boys are the best fun in the world — you 
aren't the only one that has a cinch on families ! 
Yet what an awfully queer business the family 
problem is? Outside one's home, no one tells 
one of one's small failings, while inside, one 
hears little else. Perhaps, though, one does 
not hear, but one realizes them so clearly and 
so constantly that life becomes almost a bur- 
den, and the people one loves most in the world 
are really the most trying — and the sons and 
daughters go off and marry, and the whole 
business begins again ! Meantime, I'm having 
the best kind of a time, here at home. My 
people tell me I have grown beautifully toler- 
ant. What do you think of that — hein? 

But it is good to come back to one's own 
family with enthusiasm: to feel that the ties 
of blood are not all that binds one to it. My 
mother is the same sweet, beautiful woman, 
whom it will be hard to leave — ^the more so 
now that my brother D. has determined to 
return with me. For him I am glad and it will 
be a pleasure to me to have his company : but 
of the family, three of the sons will be in Cali- 

40 



fornia, one In another part of England, and 
one, with endowments that promised much, is 
but a name and a memory to us. And the dear 
mother goes about the house, in the same quiet 
way. If I speak of the greater prospects and 
the better cHmate, she smiles and says, "Yes, he 
will be happy there," and stands at the win- 
dow, hardly listening, looking far away, over 
the roads and the treetops to the sea : but with 
tears in her eyes, that hurt more than anything 
I know. 



This is just to thank you for the note: I Piedmont, 
liked the things you enclosed. rhf7^^^' 

I was "up" for an hour or so, yesterday, but jggsf' 
so weak that it didn't take very long to stop 
the experiment. 

It's all no go. How am I ever to learn my 
craft? There is nothing but obstacles, all the 
time. 

I wish you the best of luck for tomorrow ! 

. . . Please don't trouble to send up to Dec. 9. 
enquire for me. ... I think I shall get 
steadily better, from this on. . . . 

God help me to try hard for gentleness and 
cheerfulness; digging a way out of this 
slough of superficial religion. . . . 

God let me but keep kind. 

41 



ON PAINTING 



ON PAINTING 

Today, when every town has two or more Paris, 
exhibitions of pictures in the year, all alike are ^^g-, 1S97. 
"artists"; the young woman who bespeckles 
porcelain with forget-me-nots and the young 
man, returned from abroad, having learned 
that equal parts of the primary colours added 
to four times the quantity of flake white, when 
stirred briskly for some seconds and applied 
with a fork to an absorbent canvas, result in a 
picture of "the rather impressionistic kind" — 
is it strange that intelligent people are con- 
stantly asking what 'painting' really is? 

In France one sees many brilliantly clever 
things, which, as far as painting is concerned, 
might have been done with a tooth-brush or 
the finger nail. In England, one finds every- 
thing, from "Mary and her lamb" to abstruse 
extracts from Bulfinch, all with explanatory 
poems attached to the frames ; the work done 
with fine brushes and the surface licked while 
drying, in order to attain "that 'igh finish of a 
photograph," so pleasing to the clergy. 

In America the exhibitions are distinguished 
by a preponderance of mermaids and picket 
fences. 

Under such circumstances is the public to 
be blamed for its ignorance of what the 
painters art really is? 

In the Luxembourg gallery in Paris there 
hang two modern canvases, which tell us what 
painting is, in clearest terms. 

45 



One, by Edouard Manet, a picture of a nude 
woman reclining upon the linen of a low- 
bed, will forever be ranked by painters as paint- 
ing of a great kind. In this we see that joy in 
the manipulation of brushes, in the handling 
of paint, that is the distinguishing mark of the 
painter; a man lacking this joy in the expres- 
siveness of his materials may be a poet, an 
observer, or an experimentalist: but never a 
painter. In Manet, the painter's instinct was 
of the most robust quality: what he had to 
say he said clearly: every time he put his 
brush to canvas, he did so deliberately: each 
stroke expresses the painter and explains itself. 
Let any intelligent observer compare this can- 
vas of his with those hanging near it, and he 
must at once see the difference between paint- 
ing and what are merely drawings coloured. 

The second canvas is that by Mr. Whistler, 
the now famous "Portrait of the artist's 
mother." In this we find a more sensitive kiiid 
of painting than that of Manet: an exquisite 
appreciation of what can be done with the 
brush. Apart from the distinction of the ar- 
rangement and colour, this canvas gives us an 
example of painting in the highest meaning 
of the word. It is the work, not only of a great 
painter, but of a great artist as well. A man's 
place as a painter is decided not by what he 
paints, but how he paints it. What he has to 
say is, finally of course, of greater importance 
to us than his manner. His choice of subject 
will reveal to us how much of an artist he is, 
how far he understands the limitations of his 
art: but at this present moment that deeper 
question need not concern us. 

46 




CHARENTON 

1898 



ON PICTURES 

The colour is beautiful and clear : the paint- Corot, 
ing very thin, the canvas fine and hardly count- j^^T" " 
ing at all. It looks to me as though the work 
were carried over a long time and constantly 
let harden. This man paints in a beautiful 
delicate way. The shadows are painted very 
thin and wet. 



A beautiful composition, very strongly Millet, 

modelled, with a much better feeling for the "^^^ 

brush than in his larger things— and while the ^amgneuses: 
colour is not great, yet it is simple and clean. 



A beautiful Spring-like thing — the painting Daubigny. 
very thin and quiet. He pays great attention 
to detail, without losing breadth : the painting 
is beautiful: there is no hesitation in the 
brushing. 



Most disappointing. In black and white, it Millet, 

has always delighted me: here, the colour is -l"^^^ , „ 

bad and the painting also, but the arrangement ^^^^^' '^" 
and feeling are great. 



A wonderful French evening light, full of Rousseau, 

poetry and yet very real. The colour is beauti- "p^^'^!f, ^^ 

ful : the composition fine and serene — the can- ^^^ ' 
47 



vas nowhere loaded and yet it might be cleaner 
brushing. Not what I would call great paint- 
ing : it is rather a draughtman's painting than 
a painter's. Great painting should be expres- 
sive in every stroke: there should be no in- 
decisive strokes and the brush should be felt 
everywhere. 



Kiyonaga, 

"The 

Balcony." 



Three women, on the one summer's evening 
of the world — on a rose-white enamel balcony, 
far above the pale, gold-green summer sea, 
which the sky meets, with a suggestion of sil- 
ver violet-grey. Upon the sea are boats 
which the one woman watches, as she toys 
with something she holds in her hands. Her 
gown is rosier than the water, but very 
slightly. She wears a great black sash. The 
woman standing in conversation with the one 
who is kneeling is dressed in a rose-gold gown 
— the latter in black. The blind, hanging into 
the upper corner of the picture, is green, and 
the hair of each of the women is black. 



One of the most beautiful things in the 
Louvre, to me, is the figure of a woman upon 
an earthen helmet from Canosa. Tall and 
dreamlike, beautiful in line, she carries herself, 
her shield and sword, with an exquisite grace ; 
the swirl of drapery, her forward motion and 
nodding plume, are rendered in a perfect 
way : and the rise and fall of the slight relief, 
ravish one. 



48 



There is no need for realism in painting be- Paris, 
yond a genuine impulse received from Nature : ^^^y^ ■^•^^^• 
colour and drawing one has entire liberty to 
subject to the one end of expression. 

What makes a great picture is not brilliancy 
of handling, or the complete rendering of sur- 
faces, but the seizing and holding of some ele- 
ment of that divine beauty which all things 
possess in some degree. And the mark of any 
great work of art — whether it be a print of 
Kiyonaga's, the ''Concert Champetre" "of Gior- 
gione, or a Bach fugue, — is this : that it is for 
all time and belonging to none : stamped with 
the mark of infinity. 

The "Infante" and the "Assyrian Sphinx" — 
even slighter great things, some of Corot's 
landscapes, possess this power to carry us, be- 
yond time and place, into what, in one's happi- 
est dreams, one fashions eternity. 

If the painting of surfaces were the great 
thing, we should count Manet a great artist 
for his "Olymphe," which is painting carried 
to the last point the craftsman alone can carry 
it; had the artist in him been more pro- 
nounced, he would have stood amongst the 
greatest. But that the artist comes be- 
fore the craftsman, no one will deny; the 
"Concert" of Giorgione in the Louvre, in spite 
of the fact that in a painter's sense it is not 
painted, still, like a beautiful dream, brings 
tears to one's eyes, while in the presence of the 
"Olymphe" one only wonders at the glory of 
the painting and the realism of the canvas. If 
it is a beautiful thing, it is because the woman's 
firm and supple body was a beautiful thing in 
itself — was squarely seen and wonderfully 
49 



painted : a process in which the painter never 
forgot his model. 

In all the canvases by Henry Muhrman, in 
greater or less degree, is the distinguishing 
mark of a great art : a mark one looks for with 
such dearth of reward amongst the myriad 
works of alleged artists shown at the Paris 
and London exhibitions. 

Now the God-given gift of seeing is sent not 
to the many and not to the few: somewhere 
between the many and the few the limit of this 
company lies; but the power to see, zvith the 
power to express — ah! how rare is the man 
with the two gifts ! He stands second only to 
the great architect or the great composer, who, 
by instinct, deal as freely with advanced mathe- 
matics as with the abstractly beautiful. But 
it is a futile thing — this comparison between 
the arts: if a man has seen and rendered 
beauty, let us acknowledge him: his rank, the 
years alone can decide. For us the landscapes 
of Henry Muhrman reveal these two gifts of 
seeing and expressing. . . . [Unfinished.] 



50 



ON LANDSCAPE 



ON LANDSCAPE 

The wind is north : the overhead sun floods Piedmont, 
the landscape with a hard and glaring light: ^^^'?- 
the blue sky seems, like the sun and wind, to 
lack mercy. Everything suffers : the hills look 
parched and careworn : the grass, that so lately 
brought the joy and hope of Spring to the 
hearts of men slowly yields up its life. The 
roads lie white and dusty, the ring and hard- 
ness gone from them : no invitation have they 
for the traveller. 

A group of eucalyptus trees stand silently 
bearing the unmerciful light, yet everything 
waits in hope: and as the sun slowly sinks, 
all changes. The landscape sings with colour, 
as a gem: the distant hills are suffused with 
purple and gold : their careworn look of noon 
vanishes, and in its place, great solemnness and 
contentment — broad lights and noble shadow. 
The grass, almost golden, holding still a linger- 
ing note of green, blazes now in the rich light : 
here and there long shadows steal over it, giv- 
ing peace. The trees, rejoicing in a wealth of 
colour, are of green with gold in the green and 
a broken vibrant violet in the shadows, and 
opulent gold upon trunks and branches. 

The great quiet landscape smiles; and I, 
coming wearily home over the hill, conscious 
of my own littleness (though doubtless beauti- 
ful, too, in the coloured light), smile and thank 
God fervently, that He did not make the land- 
scape grey. 

53 



i897' A glowing July afternoon on the Seine, 
between Paris and St. Cloud — men, loading 
stone on a great barge, stripped to the waist, 
the skin a golden-rose colour, quite low in tone, 
against the water, blue, very deep. 

While out of doors, I see colour high : but I 
think in low, rich colour. 



Villefranche, Terraces upon terraces, and as far as the 
Jan., 1898. gyg travels are the domes of silver-green olives 
— then, far up, a great rosy and blue cliff. 

In the beds on the terraces, beneath the olive 
trees, are Spring flowers which scent the air, 
warmed now, by the growing sun of the New 
Year. The sky is Californian blue : below me 
lies the harbour, where rides the U. S. S. "San 
Francisco," with many little empty boats 
around it. A wisp of mist lies close upon the 
horizon, but not a cloud in the sky. 



Piedmont, Vineyarded hills high in a blue sky, with 
F b ^%%' §0^^^^ houses and grey roofs. The hills are 
^ ■' ^ ^ ■ broken by the first Spring green, crocuses and 
blossoming almonds. 



Cariali. Terraced almond orchards and the trees in 
full blossom — grey hills back of them : and the 
grey-green sea, coming to purple toward the 
horizon — silver-grey houses and church-towers. 



Genoa. Golden and rosy, with the sea a grey-blue 
dream; and beyond, the blue sky with snow- 

54 



PENARTH PIER 
1898 



capped Alps — faint and vanishing; churches, 
with torrents of full colour and gold — the 
colour of fruit ripened under a warm sun. The 
curtain over a church window, full of the reds 
of fruit and wine and gold — and the market 
place — colour again. 



Town desolate — children with wooden san- Montaro. 
dais — a beautiful Wintry-Spring landscape, 
human and clean; a landscape gentle, and 
worked by man : coloured with gold and gold- 
green. The yellow rosiness of the bare wil- 
lows, touched with violet — everywhere houses 
of old gold brick and of stucco, with hospitable 
arches for cattle and crops — all taking the light 
in a simple way — with dignity: everywhere 
colour, full colour, living, but old and warm. 



A town of beautiful and sedate buildings, Verona. 
bare trees, and subdued green of Winter grass ; 
a brisk river, with golden houses and blue 
shadows — a great deal of rose-coloured marble. 
Missed our train, so lunched and slept on the 
grass. The sun begins to get warm and the 
chestnut buds are becoming sticky. A swell 
market-place — big white umbrellas and people 
with their wares below — the whole square full 
of beautiful colour and buildings — a town com- 
pact and of great dignity — people and build- 
ings, all beautiful. Squares with hosts of tame, 
hungry pigeons. Later, crossed the town and 
sat on a pile of stones by the roadside, till 
the train was due, looking over a pleasant 
green, with bare trees, soldiers drilling and 
55 



resting: a few children playing; the houses 
beyond the trees, white and golden stucco. 

On the way to Padua — a beautiful, level 
country with vines and mulberry trees — newly 
turned, golden brown earth, the new green 
showing in the grain fields and some grass 
fields all starred with a pale purple crocus: 
in the distance low hills, vibrating in sunshine 
and beyond these, hills with snow. 



Venice. Arrived by water (steam tramway from 
Padua). Venice from the boat, a blaze of eve- 
ning sunlight. St. Marks like a jewel. Saw 
Gustavo Salvini play "Othello" — an out-of- 
sight Moor in blue and gold. Place S. Marco, 
Saturday night, the gas lights lit, a band play- 
ing : all the boys and girls masked for carnival 
and all the town out. St. Marks, glowing with 
colour and the alarmed pigeons making long 
and bewildered flight in the gas-lighted night. 



Como. A quiet evening sunset — primroses in full 
bloom and willows with catkins: only two 
patches of snow on this protected side of the 
mountains — and at Chiasso a wait of two 
hours ; children doing their best to be gay for 
the fete season. 



Paris, A long sail down the river to St. Cloud — 
July, 1898. the sun hot and a cool wind blowing. 

The walk up to the basin at the end of the 
great avenue — heated with my load — smelling 
every rose along the way, and at the end, sit- 

S6 



ting upon the bank bestrewn with clover blos- 
soms and watching the great white clouds pass 
silently over the tops of the great trees. This 
is life, to me ! 

. . Where swallows play between low banks, 

And the white clouds hang reflected : 

The great white rounded clouds of Summer, 

Floating in the powdered blue. 

The great, green rounded, heavy trees. 

That shimmer down the terraced avenue. . . . 



The great trees against the singing blue Penarth, 
of the channel — gold-green slopes, with play- ^^^-,1898. 
ing children: upon the blue expanse, sails 
of luminous white, like worn ivory. Far below, 
the jutting pier, dark against the water — with 
liquid Hghts of gold and ruby, melting into 
the wet sky. 



57 




THE HILLS : PIEDMONT 
1896 



CEC :3 



iS^'^Y OF CONGRESS 



021 183 023 2 




:?**? 




